About Me

When not nosing, tasting, drinking and reading about malt whisky, I own one of Israel's premiere boutique coaching practices, specializing in small businesses and executive teams.
Trained in the law, I was an international law attorney and took part in Israel's peace negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as representing my country at the UN for parts of the negotiations on the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Later I was appointed to the military bench.
My favorite thing, other than whisky, is teaching.
You can contact me through the social media buttons above or by email: michael(at)maltandoak.com, replacing the (at) with an @.

Statement of Integrity and Guidelines

Malt and Oak is an independent whisky blog, offering my own views, opinions and news from the world of malt whisky.
These are my guidelines:

1. All whisky reviews published are of whiskies I have personally tasted and noted. Guest bloggers only write about their own personal tastings.

2. With the exception of official whisky samples, I accept no consideration whatsoever from any distillery, bottler, distributor, drink company or store for my opinions.

3. I maintain strict impartiality and objectivity in tasting all whiskies, not least when tasting official samples. Any review of official whisky samples sent to me will be so noted in the post.

4. I will accept invitations to tastings, events and official visits, and full disclosure will be made on any tasting notes and articles resulting from these events or visits.

5. Any sample received over 30 ml in volume is shared with fellow whisky bloggers. In any event, no sample larger than 100 ml will be accepted.

6. No advertisements promoting specific brands will be accepted.

7. I will answer any inquiry by my readers as quickly and as fully as possible.

8. Should I give a link purchase the reviewed whisky, it will be given free of any commercial interest. The link given will always point to cheapest selling price I found on the web. No commission is paid, nor any other consideration given, for such link.

9. As of July 2017, I serve as Douglas Laing’s Israel brand ambassasdor. As such, I will obviously not be posting reviews of Douglas Laing products.

The Port Ellen Phenomenon and a Tasting of the 26 Years Old Malt Cask

The Port Ellen distillery needs no introductions. This distillery was mothballed in the 1983 wave of distillery closing by the company now known as Diageo, in response to a serious decline in demand for whisky world over. As the whisky produced at Port Ellen was never sold as a single malt, and was only used for blends, the company figured that Lagavulin and Caol Ila would easily fill the gap, and even so both distilleries had to reduce production.

Diageo has dwindling stocks of Port Ellen whisky, releasing it in an ever more expensive yearly release. The 13th release, from October 2013, has a retail price of £1500, pretty amazing, considering that the distillery was obviously redundant 30 years ago. One must wonder why a bottle of mass produced whisky – ANY WHISKY – would warrant such a price tag. Mind you, the 12th release cost £600, the 11th cost £300 but the 10 was £275. I won’t go any further back, as those batches were much larger than the ~3000 bottles now released. All are 1978 or 1979 vintage, matured 31-34 years and bottled at 53%-55% ABV.

Could the 13th release be 500% better than the 11th release, a mere two years before?
Obviously not.

In truth, you’re no longer paying for the whisky, especially since a good number of these bottles will never be opened (I estimated that number at two thirds, some of my whisky friends think the number is higher than 80%). Most of these bottles will sit sealed in private collections, adorning shelves, and others will go to auction at ever increasing crazy prices, again never to be opened. The bottles might as well have been filled with cheap Smirnoff vodka, it would have make no difference.

Is Port Ellen Whisky good? Yes, of course it is. Had it not been good, it would have never grabbed the imaginations of fans. Added to that is the fact that releases out there are 25-35 years old. So what would be a fair price for a 30 year old whisky from a closed distillery? The answer, of course, is whatever the market says it is, and the market is talking loud and clear. Nevertheless, there’s something about Diageo setting the price tag so far inside the crazy range, that makes it feel all wrong. It seems to me that at the £300 price tag of a mere two year ago even I would have gotten a few friends together to share a bottle without it causing my eyes to water.

But £1500 for essentially the same whisky? Come on…..

Do I really fault Diageo? Well, yes and no.
Obviously, ff I had a product with high demand and short supply, I’d make sure I get the most financial mileage out of it – especially if I saw that right after consumers buy the bottle from me at £300 they turn around and sell it for double that. Company executives figure that the company could pocket that extra margin. Indeed, the 12th release was sold out just as fast as the 11th, and the 13th just as quickly. On the other hand, the original price of the expression plays a roll in the final auction price (well, usually at least, unless you spray paint the bottle gold, in which case all bets are off). This year’s Lagavulin 37 release at £1950 is probably the precursor for the price tag of the 14th release, next year. For now, the price is on its way to doubling, on ebay:

I wish there was a way to know just how many of the bottles are actually opened. This irks me because I haven’t tasted many Port Ellens, and probably won’t get to taste the 13th release or any consequent bottling. Had the bottles been used for their real purpose – bringing whisky to the end consumer who breaks the seal and pops the cork out and has a dram with his friends to cherish the moment, they would still cost only £300. So in my book, keeping these bottles sealed, is a crime against whisky with the real beneficiary being Diageo, who holds the stock of liquid gold that has not reached its market price equilibrium…

Now, getting back to the very good and very reasonably priced Port Ellen I had at the Loch Ness in Berlin. I paid €18 for a 20 ml tasting of a 26 year PE, and enjoyed every drop.

9 comments on “The Port Ellen Phenomenon and a Tasting of the 26 Years Old Malt Cask”

To blame the 2/3 (your estimate) resp. the 80 percent that do not open the Port Ellen bottlings for price increases does not take into consideration several factors, such as the fact, that the distillery is closed, the single malt has stayed in casks for more than 30 years, comes as cask strength and clearly demand exceeds offer. Especially so with the increasing demand from emerging countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Of course, the price increase (driven by the initial price tag of Diageo) from one Port Ellen release to the next is exorbitant. However, compared to the price frenzy of Ardbeg NAS bottlings (hello Galileo, Blasda, Supernova, etc.), where the consumer/ investor/ collecter does not get any transparency regarding age, vintage, sometimes even number of total bottles, the Port Ellen bottlings provide transparency while the total number of remaining casks are limited (unlike at Ardbeg, which continues to produce at full steam).

BTW: the same habits as at Port Ellen exist also at Highland Park and Macallan (and Macallan also copy/ pastes (poorly) the Ardbeg marketing gimmicks).

Ralph,
I have a whole other ax to grind with the Ardbeg (and Edrington) crazy, as you can plainly see in my “gold spray paint” comment in the post. I’ll get to that in another post.
I don’t know what PE whisky is “worth”, obviously, it’s worth 2400 EUR because people are buying it for that price. I do think that had people bought the whisky to drink, rather than sell at auction, prices would be kept reasonable and Diageo would have kept it at the ~£350 which is the £25 yearly increase seen before. Once the whisky became a commodity sold at auction, Diageo’s joining the crazy was merely a question of time….

I just want to update that I found prices for two more of the official releases, and they’ll shock you:
The 7th release sold for £125 in 2007 and the 8th release (2008) sold for £185. The 13th release, just to reiterate, was listed at £1500.
(Source: http://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/lostdistilleries.aspx)